[plug-in][doc] Breaking behavior change in Theia plug-ins

[kittaakos]

After checking #5738 we realized that from now on, it is a must to add the following to the package.json of any Theia plug-ins:

"activationEvents": [
  "*"
]

Otherwise, it won't activate.

Instead of forcing clients to update their package.json content with the wildcard activationEvents, we could check if the theiaPlugin top level property exists in the package.json and if it has either the backend or the frontend props. If so, but the activationEvents is not defined, we can infer a wildcard. So the Theia plug-in can still start without any modifications. Thoughts?

CC: @benoitf

[akosyakov]

@benoitf @evidolob please let us know whether it would be enough to add a record to the CHANGELOG or we should fix it before next release

[benoitf]

The entry should be enough (or failing with how to fix the plug-in)
Adding the default activationEvent with wildcard may be good but for example VS Code documentation says that it's never defaulted to * and has to be explicit. So maybe better to be in sync with VS Code.

Regarding che, all our plug-ins have already been updated for that change.

[akosyakov]

The entry should be enough (or failing with how to fix the plug-in)

Ok, let's update the changelog then.

Adding the default activationEvent with wildcard may be good but for example VS Code documentation says that it's never defaulted to * and has to be explicit. So maybe better to be in sync with VS Code.

For VS Code extensions, we won't do it. It will be incorrect. I am asking only about Theia plugins.

[benoitf]

For VS Code extensions, we won't do it. It will be incorrect. I am asking only about Theia plugins.

yes I understood, I was just saying that it's better to align behavior between theia plug-in and VSCode extension

[kittaakos]

Thank you all for the clarification.